As tracked by the Solactive North American Medical Marijuana Index, marijuana stocks broadly fell roughly 0.6% this week, but stock-specific news drove a few names higher by more than 5%. Five of these stocks have market capitalizations greater than $50 million USD. Here are the five pot stock winners for the week ended August 25th, 2017.
Innovative Industrial Properties Inc. (NYSE:IIPR)
Despite a lack of recent news, shares of Innovative Industrial Properties rose more than 5% in trading this week. During their earnings call about two weeks ago, management stated that the company continues to believe they will be able to deploy the rest of the capital raised from their IPO within the coming months in cannabis-related real estate. As a comparison, the Dow Jones Equity All REIT Total Index rose just more than 2% this week.
Insys Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:INSY)
On August 22nd, Insys Therapeutics issued a statement regarding the company’s recent settlement with the state of Illinois related to their fentanyl product, Subsys. Given that shares gained roughly 5% in trading this week, it would appear the market found reassurance in this statement. In addition to Subsys, Insys recently commercialized Syndros, the company’s liquid dronabinol (synthetic THC) product for the treatment of AIDS-related anorexia and for nausea and vomiting associated with cancer chemotherapy.
Intec Pharma Ltd. (TASE:NTEC)(NASDAQ:NTEC)
On the winners list for the second week in a row, shares of Intec Pharma finished this week’s trading higher by roughly 6.5%. Last week, Intec announced that the company is doing a secondary offering in order to fund a phase three clinical trial of their accordion pill Carbidopa/Levodopa for the treatment of Parkinson's’ Disease. Their cannabinoid pipeline consists of potential treatments for low back neuropathic pain and fibromyalgia that use their proprietary accordion pill drug delivery technology. Cannabinoids are notoriously challenging for the body to absorb and metabolize consistently, making drug delivery an important consideration for companies like Insys that are developing cannabinoid and cannabinoid-inspired pharmaceuticals.
MassRoots Inc. (OTC:MSRT)
MassRoots rose more than 13% in trading this week. This Wednesday, the company announced that they have entered into an agreement to acquire CannaRegs. CannaRegs is a technology-enabled tracker of changes in cannabis regulations at the local and state levels. Recently, MassRoots has been transitioning its business model to focus on providing services to dispensaries and other cannabis-related business, something that CannaRegs fits well with.
THC Biomed Intl Ltd. (CSE:THC)(OTC:THCBF)(FRA:TFHD)
THC Biomed was by far the biggest winner in this week’s trading, gaining roughly 100%. On Thursday, THC Biomed announced that the company has received its license to sell dried marijuana from Health Canada. The company has been licensed to cultivate pursuant to the ACMPR (Canada’s federal medical marijuana program) for more than a year, and has been licensed to sell starting materials (plants and seeds) to patients wishing to grow their own medicine and fellow licensed producers for quite some time. That being said, having a license to sell dried marijuana opens up significant new business opportunities for THC Biomed.
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